[Satterlee vs. Matthewson.]

Now this law may be censured, as it has been, as an unwise and unjust exercise of legislative power; as retrospective in its operation; as the exercise, by the legislature, of a judicial function; and as creating a contract between parties where none previously existed. All this may be admitted; but the question which we are now considering is, does it impair the obligation of the contract between the state and Wharton, or his alienee? Both the decision of the Supreme Court in 1825, and this act, operate, not upon that contract but upon the subsequent contract between Satterlee and Matthewson. No question arose, or was decided, to disparage the title of Wharton, or of Satterlee as his vendee. So far from it, that the judge stated in his charge to the jury, that if the transactions between John F. Satterlee and Elisha Satterlee were fair, then the elder title of the defendant must prevail, and he would be entitled to a verdict.

We are then to inquire whether the obligation of a contract between Satterlee and Matthewson was impaired by this statute? The objections urged at the bar, and the arguments in support of them, apply to that contract, if to either. It is that contract which the act declared to be valid, in opposition to the decision of the Supreme Court; and admitting the correctness of that decision, it is not easy to perceive how a law which gives validity to a void contract, can be said to impair the obligation of that contract. Should a statute declare, contrary to the general principles of law, that contracts founded upon an illegal or immoral consideration, whether in existence at the time of passing the statute, or which might hereafter be entered into, should nevertheless be valid and binding upon the parties; all would admit the retrospective character of such an enactment, and that the effect of it was to create a contract between partics where none had previously existed. But it surely cannot be contended, that to create a contract, and to destroy or impair one, mean the same thing.

[*413

If the effect of the statute in question be not to impair the obligation of either of those contracts, and none other appear upon this record, is there any other part of the Constitution of the United States to which it is repugnant? It is said to be retrospective. Be it so; but retrospective laws which do not impair the obligation of contracts, or partake of the character of ex post facto laws, are not condemned or forbidden by any part of that instrument.

All the other objections which have been made to this statute admit of the same answer. There is nothing in the Constitution of the United States which forbids the legislature of a state to exercise judicial functions. The case of Ogden vs. Blackledge came into this Court from the Circuit Court of the United States, and not from the Supreme Court of North Carolina; and the question, whether the act of 1799, which partook of a judicial character, was repugnant to the Constitution of the United States, did not arise, and consequently was not decided. It may safely be affirmed, that no case has ever been decided in this Court, upon a writ of error to a state Court, which affords the slightest countenance to this objection.

[Satterlee vs. Matthewson.]

The objection however which was most pressed upon the Court, and relied upon by the counsel for the plaintiff in error, was, that the effect of this act was to divest rights which were vested by law in Satterlee. There is certainly no part of the Constitution of the United States which applies to a state law of this description; nor are we aware of any decision of this, or of any Circuit Court, which has condemned such a law upon this ground; provided its effect be not to impair the obligation of a contract; and it has been shown, that the act in question has no such effect upon either of the contracts which have been before mentioned.

In the case of Fletcher vs. Peck, it was stated by the Chief Justice, that it might well be doubted, whether the nature of society and of government do not prescribe some limits to the legislative power; and he asks, "if any be prescribed, where are they to be *414] found, if the property of an individual, fairly and honestly acquired, may be seized without compensation?" It is nowhere intimated in that opinion that a state statute, which divests a vested right, is repugnant to the Constitution of the United States, and the case in which that opinion was pronounced was removed into this Court by writ of error, not from the Supreme Court of a state, but from a Circuit Court.

The strong expressions of the Court upon this point, in the cases of Vanhorne's lessee vs. Dorance, and The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel vs. Wheeler, were founded expressly on the constitution of the respective states in which those cases were tried.

We do not mean in any respect to impugn the correctness of the sentiments expressed in those cases, or to question the correctness of a Circuit Court sitting to administer the laws of a state, in giving to the constitution of that state a paramount authority over a legislative act passed in violation of it. We intend to decide no more than that the statute objected to in this case is not repugnant to the Constitution of the United States, and that unless it be so, this Court has no authority, under the twenty-fifth section of the judiciary act, to re-examine and to reverse the judgment of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in the present case.

That judgment therefore must be affirmed with costs.

Mr. Justice JOHNSON.-I assent to the decision entered in this cause, but feel it my duty to record my disapprobation of the ground on which it is placed. Could I have brought myself to entertain the same view of the decision of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, with that which my brethren have expressed, I should have felt it a solemn duty to reverse the decision of that Court, as violating the Constitution of the United States in a most vital part.

What boots it that I am protected by that Constitution from having the obligation of my contracts violated, if the legislative power can create a contract for me, or render binding upon me a contract

[Satterlee vs. Matthewson.]

[*415

which was null and void in its creation? To give efficacy to a void contract, is not, it is true, violating a contract, but it is doing infinitely worse; it is advancing to the very extreme of that class of arbitrary and despotic acts, which bear upon individual rights and liabilities, and against the whole of which the Constitution most clearly intended to interpose a protection commensurate with the evil.

And it is very clear to my mind that the cause here did not call for the decision now rendered. There is another, and a safe and obvious ground upon which the decision of the Pennsylvania Court may be sustained.

The fallacy of the argument of the plaintiff in error consists in this, that he would give to the decision of a Court, on a point arising in the progress of his cause, the binding effect of a statute or a judgment; that he would in fact restrict the same Court from revising and overruling a decision which it has once rendered, and from entering a different judgment from that which would have been rendered in the same Court, had the first decision been adhered to. It is impossible in examining the cause, not to perceive that the statute complained of was no more than declarative of the law on a point on which the decisions of the state Courts had fluctuated, and which never was finally settled until the decision took place on which this writ of error is sued out.

The decision on which he relies, to maintain the invalidity of the Connecticut lease, was rendered on a motion for a new trial; all the right it conferred was to have that new trial; and it even appears that before that new trial took place, the same Court had decided a cause, which in effect overruled the decision on which he now rests; so that when this act was passed, he could not even lay claim to that imperfect state of right which uniform decisions are supposed to confer. The latest decision, in fact, which ought to be the precedent if any, was against his right.

It is perfectly clear, when we examine the reasoning of the judges on rendering the judgment now under review, that they consider the law as unsettled, or rather as settled against the plaintiff here at the time the act was passed; and if so, what right of his has been violated? The act does no more than what the Courts of justice had done, and would do without the aid of the law; pronounce the decision on which he relies as erroneous in principle, and not binding in precedent.

[*416

The decision of the state Court is supported under this view of the subject, without resorting to the portentous doctrine (for I must call it portentous), that a state may declare a void deed to be a valid deed, as affecting individual litigants on a point of right, without violating the Constitution of the United States. If so, why not create a deed, or destroy the operation of a limitation act after it has vested a title?

The whole of this difficulty arises out of that unhappy idea, that the phrase "ex post facto," in the Constitution of the United States, VOL. II.-2 D

40

313

[Satterlee vs. Matthewson.]

was confined to criminal cases exclusively; a decision which leaves a large class of arbitrary legislative acts without the prohibitions of the Constitution. It was in anticipation of the consequences, that I took occasion in the investigations on the bankrupt question, to make a remark on the meaning of that phrase in the Constitution. My subsequent investigations have confirmed me in the opinion then delivered, and the present case illustrates its correctness; I will subjoin a notet to this opinion devoted to the examination of that question.

This cause came on to be heard on the transcript of the record from the Supreme Court of the state of Pennsylvania, for the middle district of Pennsylvania, was argued by counsel. On consideration whereof, it is considered, ordered, and adjudged by this Court, that the judgment of the said Supreme Court for the state of Pennsylvania in this cause be, and the same is hereby, affirmed, with costs.

For this note see the end of the volume.

314

*JOHN REYNOLDS, TENANT THE UNITED STATES, PLAINTIFF, us DUNCAN M'ARTHUR, DEFENDANT.

The lands north-west of the river Ohio, between the rivers Scioto and Little Miami, lying west of Ludlow's line, east of Robert's line and south of the Indian boundary, reserved by Virginia, in her deed of cession to the United States of March, 1784, for the satisfaction of the military bounties Virginia had promised, were not prior to 1810, by any legis lative acts of the government of the United States, withdrawn from appropriation under and by virtue of Virginia military land warrants. A patent issued on the 12th of October, 1812, founded upon a military warrant, for land within the reserved lands, is valid against a claimant of the same land, holding under a sale made by the United States.

ERROR to the Supreme Court of Ohio.

This was an action of ejectment, brought originally in the Court of Common Pleas for Champaign county in the state of Ohio, by M'Arthur, the defendant in error, against Reynolds, the tenant in possession. In that Court a verdict and judgment were rendered, in favour of the plaintiff below. The plaintiff in error appealed to the Supreme Court of Ohio for that county.

On the trial in the latter Court, (being by the laws of Ohio, a trial de novo,) M'Arthur again obtained a verdict and judgment in his favour. M'Arthur claimed the land in controversy under a patent from the United States, bearing date October the 12th, 1812, founded on entry and survey made in the year 1810, on a warrant granted for services in the Virginia line, on continental establishment during the war of the revolution. Reynolds, the defendant below, claimed as the assignee of one Henry Van Meter, who in the year 1805 entered the land in the controversy at the Cincinnati land office. It reverted to the United States in the year 1813, for non-payment of the purchase money, and during the same year it was entered again by Van Meter, and the certificate of entry assigned by him to Reynolds.

The deed of cession of the country north-west of the Ohio river, from Virginia to the United States, dated in March, 1784, reserved the country between the rivers Scioto and Little Miami, for [*418 the satisfaction of the military bounties Virginia had promised to her officers and soldiers on continental establishment. The sources of the two rivers are between fifty and sixty miles apart, and the country between them makes a part of the western boundary of the reservation. In 1802, Israel Ludlow was directed by the then Surveyor General of the United States, to run the boundary line between these rivers, who in that year accordingly ran a direct line from the source of the Little Miami towards what he supposed to be the source of the Scioto; to which river he did not extend his line, in consequence of being arrested in his survey by the Indians at the Greenville treaty line, that line being then the Indian boundary. The line run by Ludlow is called Ludlow's line.

In the year 1812, Congress passed an act authorizing the appoint